Pros
Working on toys is really cool, it’s clearly what draws many designers to KiwiCo in the first place, but be wary - only those with enormous talent and drive can find any kind of fulfillment or success, and will not be rewarded appropriately for remarkable design work. Coworkers who work on the creative side are talented and interesting people who care a lot about what they do. Free office snacks and catered lunch 1 day per week.
Cons
Turnover on creative teams is almost constant. It’s rare to see a product designer stay at the company for more than 4 months without feeling burnt out and unsatisfied. As a result morale is low and biweekly design team meetings end with “any questions?” followed by depressing silence as we all bottle up our concerns because bringing them up has only brought admonishment from managers in the past. This is 100% due to the influence and personalities of the director of product design and the CEO. Corporate structure has been stratified so that good ideas are squashed by middle management out of fear that execs wont be interested - before said ideas can be prototyped or given a chance. Product pitch processes were recently updated so that instead of pitching directly to executives, designers must pitch to their manager, who then pitches the project to executives (and often will misrepresent or completely change designers ideas so that they fit better with the manager’s preconceived notion of what will get traction). Designers are paid below industry standard, and encouraged to use the company’s out-dated systems for project management rather than investing in industry standard practices or better equipment. Designers are kept on such an aggressive schedule of projects that a small thing going wrong on one project can throw the rest off schedule and cause over time and grind culture. This is brought up REGULARLY by designers but nothing has been done to address it. Middle management and director of product design are only concerned with soothing executive perceptions rather than considering the fulfillment of employees or transformative growth for the company. Everything they do is based on “what will *blank* executive want to see?” Instead of assessing good ideas on their own merit. Product designers are woefully under supported and under resourced. The company spends tens of millions of dollars on marketing with big name influencers but paying for better equipment and storage which the design teams use every day somehow requires multi-step approvals and pitches which never come to fruition. I believe that burn out is built into the business model. As a designer the company wants you to churn out the lowest common denominator level of click-bait projects. They load designers up with as many projects as possible until things start going wrong. They care more about what will look nice in a GIF on the website than what projects will actually be enriching and fun for kids. Worst of all (and this one is really mind boggling in a company run by a woman of color) two women were hired into roles a tier beneath their white male coworkers - despite having the same or better qualifications and experience. Unbelievable. I would not be writing this review if I didn’t feel that everything I have to say has been thoroughly proven true through my experience at the company. My goal isn’t to make some HR persons day worse, but read the writing on the wall: your teams have been crying out for help for several years and very little has improved. Find a director of product design who believes in their own vision for the company instead of just checking the boxes.